Textbook Fees and the Fee-as-Tax Suits: The Pattern, and the Local Test

The appellate record searched for a suit naming the town or its school corporation

The Indiana pattern. Indiana's textbook-fee litigation is a half-century line of cases testing school charges against the state constitution's education article. Its county anchor is the pattern case itself: Chandler v. South Bend Community School Corp., 312 N.E.2d 915 (Ind. Ct. App. 1974), which upheld textbook rental fees — Article 8, § 1 does not require free textbooks. South Bend is this county's own school corporation, and its case is printed as boundary and pattern, not as a New Carlisle matter. The pattern's high-water mark is Nagy v. Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp., 844 N.E.2d 481 (Ind. 2006): a mandatory 20-dollar student services fee was held unconstitutional, 4–1 (Rucker, J.; Sullivan, J., dissenting briefly) — while the same ruling expressly declined to extend free-tuition coverage to textbook rental fees, leaving Chandler's textbook rule standing; the Court of Appeals decision below is at 808 N.E.2d 1221 (2004). The line continues in McIntire / Hoagland v. Franklin Township Community School Corp. (Ind. Ct. App. 2014), where fee claims failed to yield monetary damages under the Education Clause.

The local test. The appellate record — searched on Justia, Studicata, the Indiana Lawyer and the Advance Indiana archive on 11 November 2026 — carries no suit naming the Town of New Carlisle or the New Prairie United School Corporation in the textbook-fee or fee-as-tax line. New Prairie charged its fees, as Indiana corporations did, under the Chandler rule; no parent, taxpayer or association carried the corporation into the appellate record on the question, and no fee-as-tax suit against the town appears. The item therefore prints as a completed test with a negative local result: the pattern is real, it was litigated in this very county by the county's largest corporation, and it never reached New Carlisle's school corporation in any appellate record this section could search.

Sources:

1. Chandler v. South Bend Community School Corp., 312 N.E.2d 915 (Ind. Ct. App. 1974) (read 2026-11-11) — textbook rental fees upheld.
2. Nagy v. Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp., 844 N.E.2d 481 (Ind. 2006), affirming in part the Court of Appeals at 808 N.E.2d 1221 (2004) (read 2026-11-11) — the services fee struck; textbook fees expressly left outside the ruling.
3. Hoagland / McIntire v. Franklin Township Community School Corp. (Ind. Ct. App. 2014) (read 2026-11-11).
4. Appellate searches, 2026-11-11 (instruments named): Justia, Studicata, Indiana Lawyer, Advance Indiana — no suit naming the Town of New Carlisle or New Prairie United School Corporation.